


Hard Time Losin' Man: Il Libro sui di Antonio

by dragonmactir



Category: Wings (TV 1990)
Genre: F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-14 15:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14139117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonmactir/pseuds/dragonmactir
Summary: Even the biggest loser can find true love if he opens his eyes, but can he hang on to it?  That is the sixty-five thousand dollar question.





	1. Taxi Taxi (Cher)

It was the slow season on Nantucket Island.  Which meant that no one at Tom Nevers airfield had anything to do.  Helen Chapel leaned on her spotless lunch counter, which she’d cleaned six times already that day despite the fact that no one had come along to eat there, and Lowell Mather stood nearby, cleaning his ears with a philips head screwdriver.  He did this so often that nobody bothered warning him against it any longer.  At one of the tables, Antonio Scarpacci sat with his head in his hands, lost in thought.

 

_Donald Trump sembra un grosso, grasso bitorzolo.*_

 

He thought some more.

 

_Donald Trump sembra un grosso, grasso, **peloso** bitorzolo.*_

Roy Biggins slid into the seat across the table.  “Scarpacci, you look like a man with a lot on his mind,” he said grandly, startling the cabbie from his reverie.

 

“Oh, you know, just… deep thoughts,” Antonio said, with a nervous smile.  He quickly changed the subject.  “What are you up to, Roy?”

 

“Same as everybody around here, waiting for business.”

 

“Hey, at least we’ve got a flight coming in,” Fay Cochrane said from the Sandpiper Air counter.

 

“With how many people on it, Cochrane?  Oh that’s right, _one,”_ Roy said.  “Barely worth the fuel.”

 

“One is better than none,” Fay said, and her typically relentless cheeriness seemed to falter beneath the dark look she shot the Aeromass owner.

 

Antonio perked up.  “Someone is coming to the island?  Maybe they will need a cab.”

 

“And what will one fare do for you, Scarpacci?  You’re drowning in debt,” Roy said.

 

 

“Fay is right.  _One_ is better than _none,”_ Antonio said.  “Last night for dinner I ate one of those cheap Banquet frozen meals.”

“So?” Helen said.

 

“I was so hungry, I _liked_ it,” Antonio said.

 

Brian Hackett strolled out of the Sandpiper office, hands in the pockets of his leather flight jacket.  “What’s shakin’, guys?”

 

“Aw, Brian, we’re all so desperate for something to do we’ve got our hopes hanging on this _one person_ that Joe is flying in.  I hope they’re hungry and Antonio hopes they need a ride from the airport,” Helen said.  “Do you know anything about them?”

 

He reared back.  “I don’t keep dossiers on our passengers, Helen.  All I know is that Joe flew the last bunch of tourists to Boston and got a last-minute passenger from Boston to Nantucket.  A woman.”

 

Helen gave him The Look.  “A woman?  Alone on the plane with Joe?  Is she _pretty?”_

 

“I don’t know, Helen, and it doesn’t matter.  Joe will have his hands full flying the plane, in case you don’t remember.”

 

“I remember there’s an _auto-pilot_ feature.”

 

“Do you trust your groom-to-be or not?” Brian said.

 

Helen rubbed her hands together and chewed her lower lip.  “Oh, I do.  I do.  I just… I can’t believe he picked _me_ out of all the women in the world.  I guess it makes me jealous.”

 

“Helen, if I may,” Antonio said.  “You have nothing to feel insecure about.  You are a beautiful woman and very smart with a wonderful loving heart.  You were a wonderful wife to me and you will be a wonderful wife to Joe.  He would be an _idioto_ to ever cheat on you.”

 

“Aw, thank you, Antonio,” Helen said, beaming at him.  “You’re very sweet.”

 

“Of course, men do not always think with their brains when beautiful women are near,” he said, blissfully unaware that his mouth was still moving.  Helen shrieked and threw her dishrag at his head.  Well-honed instincts led him to duck.  The dishrag hit Roy instead.

 

“Watch it, Chapel!” Biggins growled.  “You missed.”

 

“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” she said, hissing at him.  “I hit _somethin’_ worth hittin’.”

 

“Attention… er… _everyone,_ Sandpiper Air Flight 11 from Boston is now arriving,” Fay announced over the PA.

 

“Nobody is here to meet this woman.  Maybe she really _will_ need a cab,” Antonio said.  He didn’t let himself sound too hopeful.

 

“I just hope she wants a bite to eat, first,” Helen said.  “I haven’t sold so much as a tuna sandwich today.”

 

“And I have not had a fare in _three_ days,” Antonio said.  “You at least always have _us_ hanging around for business.”

 

Joe Hackett, Sandpiper owner and pilot, came through the office door from the hangar, whistling a tune none of them knew.

 

“Good flight, Joe?” Helen asked, eyes narrowed.

 

“Oh, great flight.  Amazing flight.  That woman was incredible, just incredible.”  He stopped short.  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

 

The front door from the loading zone opened and the passenger entered.  Eyes popped and jaws dropped.  She had to _duck_ through the seven-foot clearance door.  Her long hair was half white blonde, half flaming red, right down the middle like someone had taken a ruler and drawn a line.  She wore a black T-shirt, no sign of a brassiere, and homemade jean shorts.  Her feet were bare.  Her face was tattooed with two dark red dagger-like lines from her eyes down to her collarbones.  She had several piercings including a hoop in her nose with six chains that connected to the six rings in her right ear.  She was carrying a guitar case.

 

Helen goggled at the woman for a long moment, then turned to Joe and gestured grandly with one hand.  _“That,_ Joe?  _That_ was amazing?  You threw our wedding over for that?”

 

“What are you talking about, Helen?  She’s a _musician,_ she told jokes and played the guitar all the way from Boston.  She’s really good,” Joe said.  “Made it seem like a much shorter flight than normal.”

 

Helen dropped her hand, eyes downcast and mouth a tight, thin line.  “Oh.  Well.  What I meant to say is, I’m glad you’re back safe and sound, honey.  I worry about you every time you go out.”

 

The woman was messing with her return ticket, not paying attention to the crowd of rude onlookers, perhaps deliberately, as she was surely used to being stared at just for the fact that she was well over seven feet tall.  Brian realized they were all staring like goobers and stepped forward.

 

“On behalf of the Nantucket Board of Tourism, Ma’am, I’d like to welcome you to our little island,” he said grandly, clapping his hands together once.  “It’s certainly good to see someone this time of year.  As you may know, this is sort of our ‘off season’ as far as tourism goes, but I assure you there is still plenty to see and do.  My name is Brian Hackett, I’m a representative of Sandpiper Air.  May I ask what brings you to Nantucket?”

 

The woman looked up -- to her own eye level, high above Brian’s head.  She looked around in confusion.  “Hello?  Is someone there?  I know I heard a voice,” she said.  She looked down and started.  “Oh, there you are!  Hi, my name is Dragon, nice to meet you.”  She held out a very large hand to him.

 

Gingerly, his face set in the same expression as a man who has just been slapped, Brian shook with her.  She laughed.  “Men always get so wound up when I make that joke.  I’m not saying you’re _short,_ sweetie, I’m saying that when I stand still for too long on the side of the street people start stapling ‘Lost Cat’ posters to me,” she said.  “Might as well get the ‘tall girl’ jokes out in the open.  I know everybody’s thinking them.”

 

“No, not me, no no,” everybody said at once, looking around at each other.

 

“Didn’t I tell you she was amazing?” Joe said, laughing.  “You should hear her sing.”

 

“Are you here for a gig, then?” Fay asked.  “Going to play in the Club Car or somewhere like that?”

 

“Oh no,” the woman -- _Dragon,_ apparently -- said.  “No, I’ve got a steady gig in Boston.  No, I’m here looking for a place to live.”

 

Everyone shared a look amongst themselves.

 

“Wouldn’t you rather live in… oh, I don’t know… _Boston?”_ Helen said.

 

The woman laughed.  “Well, the problem with Boston is that it’s a city, and I don’t like cities.  They’re big, and cold and noisy and… full of people.  I’d rather commute.”

 

“Nantucket is quite a long commute from Boston,” Lowell said, showing one of those rare signs of intelligence that even _he_ showed on occasion.

 

“Yeah, well, I’m just looking.  I’ve looked around a lot of places and I haven’t made my mind up yet.  I wasn’t going to come here but someone started talking it up to me and it sounded nice and… I do kind of like the idea of living on an island.  I don’t know why.”

 

“Where are you from?” Roy asked.

 

“Iowa.”

 

“That makes sense,” Lowell said.  “You grew up on an island of grass surrounded by a sea of corn, and now Nantucket sings to you.”

 

She appeared to mull that over, though more likely she was wondering whether there was a decent police force on so tiny an island.  Finally she looked at Lowell and nodded slowly.  “You know, you may be right.”

 

“Don’t mind him, he sometimes drinks brake fluid instead of his Dr. Pepper,” Antonio said.

 

“Hey, only that _one time,_ Antonio,” Lowell said severely.

 

“Antonio?” the woman said, in a flawless accent.  “Italiano?”

 

“Si,” Antonio said cautiously.

 

“Where from?” she asked, without any accent at all.

 

“Napoli.  Well, nearby.”

 

“My parents were from Venice.  Well, nearby,” she said, and flashed a brilliant smile.  She had enormous white teeth, very sharply pointed.  Antonio felt his heartbeat triple and couldn’t quite explain why.

 

“Do you -- ”  His voice squeaked and he tried again.  “Do you need a lift, by any chance?”

 

She looked him up and down.  “Oh, honey, it’s sweet of you to offer, and I _am_ kind of tired, but you’re what, a hundred and fifty-five pounds?  I don’t think you could manage it.”

 

Joe laughed out loud.  “See?  Isn’t she a riot?”  Everybody looked hard at him, none harder than Antonio.

 

“I meant that I have a cab,” he said, turning back to her.

 

“Oh!  Well, in that case, I have cash,” she said brightly, gathering up her guitar case.

 

Antonio stood up and aside.  “My kind of woman,” he said, and followed her out the door.

 

* * *

 

 

_* Donald Trump looks like a big, fat wart._

_* Donald Trump looks like a big, fat, **hairy** wart._


	2. Hello, I Love You (Won't You Tell Me Your Name?) (The Doors)

Antonio opened the back door of his cab for her and held it as she climbed in, then closed it hard (it had a tendency not to shut properly if he didn’t slam it) and slid behind the wheel.  “Where are you headed?” he asked as he started the meter.

 

“Harbor House Inn,” she said.

 

“Nice place,” he said.  “They wouldn’t let me be a houseboy there.”

 

She laughed.  “Good one.”

 

“I am not joking,” he said.  “They said I ‘did not possess the qualities they were looking for’ in someone to clean their toilets.”

 

“Hmph.  Bunch of stuck-up teste di cazzi,* huh?”

 

“There is a lot of that on the island, but there are a lot of good people, too.”

 

“Well, that’s good.”

 

“What kind of guitar do you play?” Antonio asked.

 

“All of ‘em.  This one is a twelve-string acoustic.  My favorite, by far.”

 

“Twelve string?  Wow.  You must be good.  I can barely play six strings.”

 

“You play?”

 

“I only just started learning in the last few months.”

 

“Well, you’ll get better.  Twelve-string is like… becoming a _Jedi Knight_ of the Guitar.  Everyone wants to get there, but it takes a significant investment of time and dedication.  Me, I’ve been playing since I was thirteen,” she said, with one of those brilliant smiles he caught a glimpse of in the rear view mirror.

 

“And… how old are you now?” thinking that she didn’t look particularly aged.

 

She paused.  “Twenty-three.  But I _started out_ on the twelve-string, so my comparative youth doesn’t count.  You see these fingers?  They’ve been torn to shreds,” she said, holding up both her big hands over the seat for inspection.  Antonio couldn’t help but think that, despite their enormous size, they were startlingly delicate hands, with long, long, _long_ fingers that looked incredibly nimble.  “Look, just keep pluckin’ and you’ll get there.  You don’t use a pick, do you?”

 

He reached up and touched his hair.  “Well, I can’t really get a _comb_ through this,” he said.

 

She pushed on his shoulder.  “Estupido.  A _guitar_ pick.”

 

“Oh.  No,” Antonio said.

 

“Good, picks are for pusses.  A real guitarist uses their fingers -- _all_ of them.”

 

A powerful mental image and he reflexively jerked the vehicle into oncoming traffic.  Horns sounded, tires squealed, and he pulled back into his proper lane.  He felt sweat beading on his brow and upper lip.  Why?  This was hardly the sort of woman to which he was typically attracted.

 

“Easy, there, Low Rider,” she said.  “You okay?”

 

“Yes, I… thought I saw a squirrel in the road,” he said.  He didn’t at all like the shaky quality he heard in his voice.

 

“I love animals, too, but try not to trade _human_ lives for rodents, ‘kay?”

 

She settled back into her seat and appeared to be happy with silence, but that broke Antonio’s first rule of cab driving on Nantucket -- Keep the Fare talking.  And no matter how uncomfortable she made him, this was his first fare in a long time, maybe his last for awhile.  He had to keep her distracted.

 

“So, your parents were immigrants?” he said, just to have something to say.

 

“Yup.”

 

“From Venetzia?

 

“Nearby.  A small village, Santa Cangelo.  You heard of it?”

 

He shook his head at the rear view mirror.

 

“No one ever has,” she said in some obvious disappointment.  “I would like to go there someday, but I can’t find it on any maps of Italy.”

 

“A lot of villages are too small for the cartographers to bother with,” Antonio said.  “My own village, Balpesi, is virtually unknown to the rest of the world.  And we like it that way.”

 

“Near Napoli, you said?  That puts you almost at the extreme opposite end of the country.  No wonder you don’t know Santa Cangelo.”

 

Antonio laughed.  “I hate to admit it, and do not tell anyone on the island because they all think I know every inch of Italy first-hand, but I have never even been to Venice.  I was only once in _Napoli_ , and that was to smuggle aboard the cargo ship that brought me to America.”

 

She laughed.  “Sounds like my Dad.  All these great stories about the beauties of Italy… _none_ of them firsthand accounts.”

 

“Are your parents still in Iowa, then?” Antonio asked.

 

“My parents are dead.”

 

The car screeched as he hit the brakes.  “Oh.  I am sorry to hear that,” he said as he pressed the accelerator again.

 

She looked out the window.  “It was a long time ago.”

 

“How did you lose them?  Or… is that too personal?” he said.

 

“It’s okay.  There was a car crash.  So if you could stop veering and slamming on brakes and making me feel like I’m going to join them any minute, that would be nice,” she said.

 

“I’m… sorry,” he said, sinking into his shirt collar a little.

 

“S’okay.”

 

“Do you… have any other family?” he asked.

 

“Two brothers and a sister, plus an uncle I’ve met a couple of times who doesn’t give a damn.  And an unspecified number of relatives back in Italy I don’t know at all.”

 

“At least you have your siblings,” Antonio said.

 

“Not really.  They’re all so much older than me that they never really gave a damn about me, either.  When our parents died they were all already living their own lives outside the house.  I got shipped out to a State Home.”

 

“State Home?” Antonio said.

 

“Foster care.  A ‘family’ that takes in orphaned or unwanted kids for the check the government pays them once a month to do it.  I was fed when I needed to be and they let me sleep indoors, but that was about all.  There were four other fosters in that house with me.  You’d think we’d have bonded over our shared neglect, but… we’ll, I guess at six foot six and in advanced collage courses in middle school, I was too weird for their little orphan clique.”

 

She was still looking out the driver’s side window.  What color were her eyes?  Grey, he thought.  Pretty, but a little creepy.  He preferred brown eyes, but maybe that was a native prejudice.  Most Italian girls had brown eyes and dark hair.  Of course, he had something of a thing for _red_ hair, red like Casey’s hair, like the right side of this woman’s hair.  Was _one_ half of this woman’s hair a dye job or were _both_ halves fake?  He couldn’t tell.  He kind of liked it, though.  It was wild.  Wild like the tattoo and the piercings.  All together they made him wonder just how wild she really was.

 

 _Riusciro!*_ he told himself severely.  He was well past the age of looking for nothing but a good time.  He

wanted a nice girl, a family.  He wanted to settle down.  The search was going miserably.

 

She turned her head to watch something go by out the passenger side window and he watched her in the rear view mirror.  Wait a moment -- why had he thought her eyes were grey?  They looked brown now.  Dark, lovely brown.  If only it were daytime instead of dusk, perhaps he could better tell.  A straight-forward view in the mirror would be good, too, but on those occasions when she had been facing front thus far she’d been looking down.

“What brought you out to Massachusetts, then?” he asked, looking to keep her talking as long as possible.

 

“Well, don’t tell any of the natives, but I went to school at Yale,” she said, with yet another bright smile he only half saw.

 

“Ah.  For music.”

 

“No, law.  If I’d wanted to go to school for music, I’d have tried to get into Princeton.”

 

“Pardonne, but I can’t see you as a lawyer somehow.”

 

“Ha!  Neither could I, but I thought my parents wanted me to be ‘successful.’  Took me awhile to realize that ‘success’ had more than just a monetary meaning.  That’s when I quit my job as a paralegal in New York and started stumping around for jobs as a musician.  Got a full-time gig in a nice, classy Boston night club.”

 

She dug in her shorts pocket and pulled out a book of matches.  “Here.  If I don’t get people in the doors and in the seats drinking, I’ll get fired, so if you’re ever in Boston with nothing better to do, look the place up, eh?”

 

He looked at the matchbook.  “Rick’s Place,” the cover read, along with the address.  He tucked it into his shirt pocket.  “I’ll do that,” he said, and he realized he meant it.

 

She sat back again and started looking out the driver’s side window once more.  There!  Her eyes _were_ grey!  He thought so.  Why did they look so dark when she turned her head the other way?

 

“So… ‘Rick’s Place,’” he said, trying to make it sound like a chatty joke.  “Sounds like it would be _Casablanca_ -themed.”

 

“It is,” she said.  “Arabic design, palm trees, all set up like you’re in the nineteen-forties…  I’m kind of an anachronism there, but the management says as long as I dress nice and bring in the customers our arrangement will continue.”

 

“Do you play old songs?” Antonio asked.

 

“No, I play my own original stuff.  Which _really_ makes me an anachronism.”

 

“What kind of hours do you work?”

 

“Eight hour shifts, three nights a week, Friday through Sunday.”

 

“Sounds kind of nice, when you love the work.  How much are you making?”

 

“A grand.”

 

_“One thousand dollars a week?”_

 

She laughed.  “One thousand dollars a _night,_ actually.  It’s a very nice joint, is Rick’s Place.  And they don’t make me put up with amorous customers, either.  They put up a little sign on the stage that says ‘Don’t touch the Dragon: She bites.’”

 

“Sounds like you’ve got it pretty good,” Antonio said.

 

“Hmm.  But I miss home.  Back then I had this huge house filled with people that loved me, good food on the table, a huge yard, I could go outside and just scream at the top of my lungs and nobody would be bothered because nobody could hear me, you know?  We were way out in the middle of nowhere.  Nobody cared.  And I could just fling my arms out and fall into the grass and let everything go.  I haven’t found a place to _do_ that, here.”

 

“Too many people.”

 

“Yeah.  All too close together, and they’re all indifferent, but they’re all up in your business, you know?”

 

He turtled into his collar a little more.  “Signorina, I am sorry, I do not mean to pry into what is not my business.  I am just trying to make what you call ‘small talk.’”

 

“It’s okay.  It’s nice to actually _talk_ to someone for a change, instead of just speaking words nobody listens to.  Nobody listens.  Certainly not without an _ulterior motive,”_ she said with some significance, watching something go by outside the passenger-side window again.

 

“You say it’s been awhile since you’ve had good cooking?” Antonio said.

 

She laughed again, in a rueful sort of way.  “My mother was an _amazing_ cook.  Foster mother?  Couldn’t cook a microwave frozen dinner.  It was fend for yourself or starve.”

 

“So you taught yourself to cook.”

 

She laughed again, a much more genuine sound.  “No, I learned how to microwave a frozen dinner.  I can’t even cook toast without setting the toaster on fire.”

 

“Signorina, it’s so easy to cook a good homemade Italian meal!  You do not have to go without!”

 

“Well, maybe if my mother had lived long enough to teach me, I’d be able to cook.  Unfortunately, she didn’t have the chance.  She was more interested that I pursue other studies at that point.  I guess she figured that there’d be time for cooking later.”

 

“So you have not a’had a good home cooked meal since a’you Mama died?” Antonio said, his accent increasing as he became more agitated.  “That is a sin and a shame.  You tell Antonio what you a’hungry for and he will a’cook it for you.”

 

“Is that a pickup line?” she asked.

 

Antonio paused and thought over what he’d just said.  “No, signorina.”

 

“Well, it should be, I would think it would be a lot more effective than most come ons.  Let me ask you something.”

 

“Si?”

 

“What can you cook?”

 

“Anything.  Veal scaloppini, stracciatella alla Romano, kaplit -- ”

 

“You know how to make kaplit?”

 

Antonio’s face split in a broad smile and he nodded at the rear view mirror.  “Si, signorina.”

 

“Mmm… okay, let me ask another question.”

 

“Si, signorina.”

 

“How many more times are you planning on driving past the Harbor House Inn?”

 

Antonio’s tan face blanched ghastly pale.  “Mi scuse, signorina, I… ”

 

“I get how it is.  Tourism is off, there’s only a small local population and most of them have their own vehicles.  You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to get by, right?”

 

“It is Antonio’s shame to have tried to cheat you.”

 

“Tell you what, I’ll pay for the entire fare, even the extra distance, plus a gratuity… if you make me that dinner you promised.  Kaplit.”

 

He sat up straight and grinned.  “Signorina, I will make it for you along with fresh-made garlic bread and I will serve it with… unfortunately very cheap… white wine.”

 

“It’s a date.  So onward, Antonio, to wherever you do your cooking, I guess,” she said, as Harbor House Inn flashed by on the right again.

 

“It will be the best meal you have had since you were a little bambina,* I promise you,” Antonio said, making the turn to head toward the sleazier district of town where his small one-room apartment was.

 

They drove in silence for a few blocks, and then Antonio looked up from the road into the rear view again.  “Signorina, if I am going to make you dinner, should I not know your name?” he said.

 

“You do know my name, or at least I did say it, back at the airport.  It’s Dragon.”

 

“Dragonne.  This is not your real name.  A beautiful woman like yourself has a beautiful name, surely.”

 

“It’s my Spirit Name.”

 

“What is this, ‘Spirit Name?’”

 

“A name that matches your soul.  It’s not necessarily or even typically the name you were born with.”

 

“So you feel that your soul is a _Dragon?”_

 

“I’ve always been a fire breather.”

 

“No, no, no, dragons are vicious, ugly creatures.  You are too beautiful to be a dragon, signorina.  What is your real name?  Tell Antonio, please, I beg you.”

 

She chuckled.  “You’re pretty smooth, Antonio.”

 

“Signorina, I’ve got the moves of a wallaby.  But still you will tell me, no?”

 

“Solonia Vannoni.”

 

“Ah, see, now that is _beautiful_ name.  Si, belissima.”

 

“Didn’t go over well in a German Lutheran Preparatory School.”

 

“Pah!  Germans!  What do they know of beautiful names?  Solonia is beautiful.  And… I have never heard the name Vannoni before.  First and last together, your name sound like music.”

 

“It’s supposed to be a rare name.  Vannoni, I mean.  There’s only supposed to be my direct family in the United States, and I have no idea what’s going on with it over in Italy.  According to my father, we used to be aristocracy, back when Italy had such a thing.  That’s probably why I have blonde hair and… well, these screwed up bluish eyes.  Our region of Italy was conquered by the Austrians at one point, so if we really were aristocracy we were probably bred down from the Austrian conquerors or interbred with them at some point.  My dad was a blue-eyed blond, too.  It crops up every once in awhile in the family.”

 

“So the red hair, it is dye?”

 

She laughed.  “Mostly.  You don’t need to know any more than that.  At least for right now.”

 

* * *

 

 

* assholes

*Stop!

*girl (baby girl)


	3. Too Much Food (Jason Mraz)

“I have to confess, signorina, I don’t have very good seating, even for… well, _regular-sized_ people,” Antonio said, unlocking his apartment door and blushing as he committed what he knew to be an egregious breech of etiquette when dealing with anyone, let alone someone who was somewhere around eight feet tall.

 

“Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” she said, not batting an eye.  “I’m wearing my back brace.  All I need is something sturdy enough to hold me and I’ll be just fine.”

 

Antonio opened the door.  She saw the Murphy bed tucked into the wall, the extra small kitchenette, the tiny dining table with the two spindly chairs.  That was all for furnishings.

 

“On the other hand, I’ll be just fine sitting on the floor with my back against the wall,” she said.

 

“Oh, Signorina Solonia, I cannot let you do that, especially if you have a bad back.  Here, at least sit on the bed against the wall.  You can use my pillows to prop yourself up,” he said, pulling the bed down out of the wall.

 

She gave him a look.  “Haven’t been here two minutes and you’ve already got me in your bed.  Oh well.  Grazie.”

 

“Prego.*  I will start the soup.  Make yourself at home.”

 

She looked around at the plain grey walls.  “What do you do for fun around here?” she asked.

 

“I, um… don’t really have ‘fun,’ exactly.  Fun is expensive.”

 

“If it weren’t getting so late, I’d play my guitar for you, but I’d wake up your neighbors,” she said.

 

“Oh, you go right ahead and play,” he said.  “All the people in this building are drug addicts and are out for the night, looking for parties or their fixes, except for the man who lives above me.  He’s clean, but he’s got a night job, so he’s out.  As long as Antonio is quiet as a mouse during the day, he can be as loud as he want at night and no one bothers him.”

 

“Don’t you sleep at night?” she asked.

 

“Unless the crack heads bring their parties home with them, yes, usually.”

 

“So this is just a _great_ arrangement for you.”

 

“Life, she shits on Antonio all the time.  I am used to it.”

 

“You have to work tomorrow, don’t you?  I’m keeping you up.”

 

“It is okay.  I am my own boss, I make my own hours.  It’s the off season, no one needs a cab on this island.  Except for maybe you.”

 

“I have no schedule to keep.  Just going to look at some houses.  Not even bringing a realtor in on it yet.”

 

“I hope you like it here,” Antonio said.  “It is a _good_ place, Nantucket.”

 

“Where would the dirty limerick industry be without it?” she said, with one of those brilliant smiles.  It was the most direct look she had ever given him, and he saw something very strange in the brief glimpse he caught of her eyes before she looked away again.  Were they… half grey and half brown?  Impossible.

 

He got down his flour canister and took the carton of eggs out of the tiny Frigidaire.  He casually tried to maneuver himself in order to see her from the front again.

 

“You’re trying to see my eyes, aren’t you?” she said.  “You cottoned on finally.  Sometimes it does take awhile for people to notice, I guess since I’m up so high.”

 

“I… I don’t mean to be rude, they just… they’re not _really_ …?”

 

She looked at him straight on.  The left half of each eye was a rich brown color, the right half was pale grey.  In the middle, perfectly bisecting the colors, her pupils were slit vertically like a cat’s.  Or a dragon’s.

 

“Mama mia…” Antonio couldn’t help but blather.  He knew what his mother would say about those eyes, sign of the devil.  She’d cast curses at this woman and say that Antonio needed to get away as fast as he could.

 

But those were the old-world superstitions.  This was America.  He was a rational man.  No one had eyes like that.  She was a musician, with an image she was trying to build on.  He felt his panic subside and managed a smile.

 

“You are wearing contact lenses,” he said.  “They are very wild.  They suit you.”

 

She smiled.  “That’s not the reaction I usually get.  People tend to have this _strange_ expectation that I care what they think about me.  Still, it is nice to get a compliment every now and then.  But contacts are kind of bothersome.  You don’t mind if I take ‘em out and put on my glasses, do you?”

 

“No, no.  Go right ahead.  Do what makes you comfortable.”

 

She flipped open her guitar case and took out a small white contact lens container and went through the process of blinking out her lenses and putting them away.  Then she took out a hard plastic glasses case and slipped on a pair of wire-rimmed frames.  “Well, what do you think of my eyes now, Antonio?” she said, smiling with megawatt brilliance.

 

He looked.  The glasses were thick and minimized her large eyes a great deal, but…

 

_… they were still half brown and half grey._

 

Only the shape of her pupils had been altered by the contacts.  Antonio felt a brief shiver of fear up his spine, but it passed.  Why be afraid?  They were just… eyes.  And he was not a little boy listening to his mother’s stories anymore.  Why, eyes like those were probably unique in all the world.  And they were absolutely beautiful, too.

 

“You’re staring,” she said.

 

“Never have I seen such glory,” he said, not really thinking about it.  Her relatively pale cheeks blushed.

 

“Oh, you probably have.  The condition is called Horner’s Syndrome, or simply segmental heterochromia.  It’s very rare in people but fairly common in animals.  Maybe you’ve seen a cat with one eye colored differently than the other.  It’s the same condition.  Different colored patches of fur or hair can be produced by the condition as well.”

 

“So you had a patch of red hair and you dyed half to even it out?”

 

“No, I’m… I’m all blonde.  Up top.”  She laughed nervously.  “Let’s just say that I couldn’t make the carpet match the drapes so I made the drapes better match the carpet.”

 

“Oh?  _Oh!”_   Antonio stumbled and had to juggle a bottle of olive oil and a container of Morton’s salt in his arms before transferring them to the counter in an upturned pile.  He felt nervous sweat beading on his brow and pulled the dishrag from the drying rack to pat himself down.  “You were… going to play guitar for me, you said.”

 

“If you like,” she said, and she grabbed the twelve-string by the neck.  “Any requests?”

 

“Anything you want to play.  I am not picky about music,” he said.

 

“You say this to a woman with six chains attached to her nose?  Are you sure this is a wise maneuver?” she said, winking at him.

 

“I am… _courageous_ enough for this,” he said, squaring his shoulders.

 

She began to play, soft and sweet.  The words and music were familiar, but he didn’t think he really knew the song.  It was about someone named Vincent, and truth be told, it made him feel a little bit jealous.  Especially the part when Vincent killed himself and she sang, “but I could have told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”  Who the hell was this _Vincent_ schmoe?

 

She finished the song as he was beating the dough.  She watched him for a minute.  “You know, I know that’s hard work, I saw my mother do it countless times, but I think that noodle dough is going to swear out a Restraining Order against you in a minute if you don’t back down,” she said.

 

He looked down, half expecting to see bruises on the doughy pile.  “Scuse me, signorina.”

 

“Any reason why that song made you angry?” she asked blandly.

 

“I don’t know.  Who is… _was_ … Vincent?  You obviously cared about him.”

 

She laughed.  A loud, open laugh that probably awakened the entire block.  “It’s not my song,” she said.  “It’s by Don McLean.  You’ve never heard it before?”

 

A great weight lifted off of him.  “Oh, I see.  I see!  Ah, no, I have never heard the song, but I was not familiar with much American music before I come to live here.  I don’t drive with the radio on very often.  It disturbs the passengers.”

 

“You thought he was an old boyfriend,” she chided gently.  “And it pissed you off.”

 

He waved his flour-whitened hands before him vigorously.  “No, no no, no no!  You have your boyfriends, that is fine.  I am just the cab driver.”

 

“Actually, I’ve never had a boyfriend before,” she said.  “Never been on a date.”

 

“Oh, that is wrong.  You are too beautiful to never have known love,” Antonio said.

 

“Ho l’amore.  Ho un cagna a tre gatti mia.*”

 

“You know what I meant.  You cannot hide your loveliness behind cats and dogs and say that this is all the love you are looking for in the world.  You are hiding your true self behind your tattoos, afraid to show the world your face.  Afraid to get hurt.”

 

“I thought you were a cab driver, not a psychologist,” she snapped.

 

“You learn a little something about human nature, watching so many people come and go each and every day.  A little like a bartender.  Bella donna, you know what I say is true.  And I say you are too beautiful to live alone and lonely with cats and dogs.”

 

“An uncommon sentiment amongst… _anyone_ I’ve ever met,” she said.  “I’m the awkward girl that sits in the corner strumming her guitar all night, not the popular girl guys continually hit on.  And I confess, I do have a suspicious nature that may make it hard for anyone who might _be_ interested to approach me.”

 

“Anyone who would not want you is blind as well as stupid, and you have been nothing but kind tonight, signorina.”

 

“Well.  Thank you, dolce carino,” she said, blushing.  It made him blush, too.  No one had ever called him a sweet and charming man before, at least not in Italian, which made it sound more genuine to his ears, somehow.

 

“De nada,” he said, waving it off and returning to his noodle-making.  The dough had to chill for twenty minutes in the refrigerator, long enough for him to make the dough for the garlic bread he’d promised her.  She turned her attention back to the guitar and began to strum another song.  He recognized that one, a Beatles tune, “Do You Want to Know a Secret?”  He tried not to read anything into it.  He was just the cab driver.  And almost twice her age, besides.

 

* * *

 

* You’re welcome

*I have love.  I have a dog and three cats.


End file.
